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6 CAPTCHA Alternatives to Improve Conversion

Linda Bustos — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:03:15 +0000

CAPTCHA is more than a catchy name, it’s an acronym — Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. But in practical terms, CAPTCHAs are often Consistently Annoying, and Prevent The Conversion from Happening A-Lot.

One study by Stanford University (link opens as PDF) found 3 human users agreed on the “translation” of the CAPTCHA only 71% of the time…

SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 3, 2012

Matt McGee — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:04:13 +0000

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

5 Common Tracking Problems: How To Troubleshoot & Fix Them
I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with some clients’ analytics installs. Unlike types or broken code, or misspelled words – issues with tracking scripts don’t always raise their hands and scream, “Hey dummy, you deleted the tag!” I thought it would be handy for the beginners […

45 Resources on Google Search Plus Your World

Kristi Hines — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:35:09 +0000

If you thought that Google+ would eventually fail like other attempts by Google to enter the social media world, think again. Google has integrated Google+ into their environment in many ways, changing the way marketers must think about search and social media marketing.

The following resources will help you understand how Google+ is now integrated into search and other products, and how you can start adjusting your online marketing strategy for Search Plus Your World…

How To Use Custom Post Types To Organize Online Marketing Campaigns

Joshua Dodson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:04:53 +0000

Custom post types add a level of flexibility to WordPress that makes this open-source Web development platform more useful on many levels. Whenever I have been faced with a Web-based task, especially one that involves organizing information, the first thing I do is examine WordPress to determine if it can handle the job. It usually can.

Image Source

As an Internet marketer and analyst, I need to be able to organize online marketing campaigns in a way that is trackable in Google Analytics…

Web Jobs Salary Trends UK update Jan 2012

DG — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:29:26 +0000

Our Salary Trend graph has been updated to Jan 2012 and I have also included a snapshot report for Web Developer and Web Designer Jobs.

The trend in Social Media Manager salaries is interesting. Both December and January are showing some uptrend and at this rate Social Media Manager salaries might even meet the averages of Online and Digital Marketing Managers .

Web Developer salaries are heavily concentrated in the £21k to £31k range and the comparison with Developers is interesting…

How User Personas Can Improve Your CRO Strategy

Sean Work — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:57:00 +0000

CRO is a technique that should be in every digital marketer’s arsenal – it would be short sighted to drive huge volumes of traffic to your site if you’re haven’t got an eye on whether they converting or not.

But how do you make sure that you’re optimizing your site for all of the different types of user that visit your site, many of whom will have different aims and intentions for their visit? User personas offer a means of identifying these user groups and presenting them in an accessible format that can be shared throughout your business…

Using Online Data to improve Offline Business

Guest — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:26:25 +0000

Are you potentially missing out by not using knowledge of your online/website visitors to improve your offline marketing success? (Offline could mean printed media, trade fairs, radio, in-store etc.)

Most businesses these days accept that having a website which reflects the business brand and which performs all the functions that a customer expects is an absolute requirement. The website (with access to even basic analytics) also offers business owners insights into customer behaviours and preferences…

How to Keep Your Web Marketing Campaigns from Crashing and Burning

Neil Patel — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:49:11 +0000

You may never experience an epic failure like Coke did with its “New Coke” marketing campaign back in 1985, but if you are a business owner, freelancer or marketing manager you will eventually fail.

That’s not such a bad thing. It’s really what you do after that failure that counts.

At the very least, failing at a web marketing campaign means you’re trying. The secret is to figure out how not to make those mistakes in the first place…

PPC Ad Writing Contest by Marketing Experiments

Chris Crompton — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:04:37 +0000

Our friends at Marketing Experiments are working with one of our clients on their marketing content strategy. They’re inviting everyone to compete in this creative experiment.

Read about their Ad Writing Contest and then submit your best entry as a comment to their blog post.

From their post:”The trouble with a content strategy is that it is very difficult to create content, and very difficult to predict what content will resonate with your customers…

Google Analytics Tutorial: 8 Valuable Tips To Hustle With Data!

Avinash Kaushik — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:52:44 +0000

It is painfully heartbreaking to realize that a very small tiny number of people who have access to web analytics tools actually use them.

I mean really use the tool. Ravage all the features. Exploit every possible button. Produce built-in visualization magic. Poke into the hidden crevices and discover exotic delights. Nourish yourself with the info snacks that the tool's Engineers and Product Managers cooked up…

40 Advanced and Alternative Search Engines

Kristi Hines — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:43:59 +0000

Have you ever been looking for something but didn’t know where to find it? If that something is online, then your search is over (or just about to begin). The following are 40 advanced and alternative search engines that you can use to find just about anything on the Internet. Use them to follow discussions about your industry, monitor your online reputation, and much more!

General Search

To start off our search adventure, let’s look at some general search engines beyond the top three…

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) Applies to Any Data Stored in the USA

Irene Bodle — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:59:49 +0000

The US Court of Appeals has ruled that the ECPA, an American law, protects the data of non-USA citizens when their data is stored on servers in the USA.

Suzlon Case

Korean firm, Suzlon Energy Ltd, wanted Microsoft to disclose email

…

How to Create Your Own Promo Video for Under $100

Sean Work — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:29:45 +0000

In a recent KISSmetrics post entitled Can Product Videos Increase Conversion Rates?, Sherice Jacobs explains why video marketing has finally come of age, and why video is an essential selling tool for any business. One of the more popular video formats these days are explanatory videos, or explainer videos.

Explainer videos are typically 60-90 second videos explaining how your company works and what sets you apart from the competition (your unique selling proposition, or USP)…

PBS saves time with automated reports

Pete Frisella — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:01:00 +0000

For most companies using Google Analytics, reporting on website traffic and performance for a few web properties is a straightforward task. However, if your company manages hundreds of web properties, delivering useful and timely reports can become a significant challenge. For many, the only apparent solution is to manually export analytics data for each web property, then combine and compare that data to answer relevant business questions…

Tracking Outbound / Affiliate Links with getClicky

Joost de Valk — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:30:09 +0000

I use Clicky for most of my day-to-day tracking and analysis, only using Google Analytics for the harder analyses. One of the things Clicky can do most wonderfully is track outbound clicks. There’s an issue however when you start routing your affiliate links through a script or on-site redirect. I redirect mine through /out/ here on yoast.com, but not all of the /out/ links need to be tracked. Let me show you how I do track the ones I need to track…

Google Privacy Policy Overhaul: Reflections for Online Marketers

Chris Crompton — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:10:35 +0000

Google’s upcoming privacy policy overhaul addresses two themes:

1. Providing users with more intuitive functionality across Google properties (Search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.), and
2. Providing advertisers with more relevant targeting options across Google properties.

The key distinction here is “across Google properties.”
While the most privacy-conscious users may be concerned with the changes, for advertisers there is nothing but upside…

Update to Search Engine Optimization reports

Google Analytics team — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:10:00 +0000

In October, we made Google Webmaster Tools available to all users in Google Analytics, allowing everyone to surface Google search data in new Search Engine Optimization reports. Starting today, Webmaster Tools will update how they calculate data to make it better match expectations about what a search engine ranking really means.

Based on their research, the answer to the question “What is your rank in search results?” is the first position of a link to your site…

How Netflix Measures You to Maximize Their Revenue & How It Can Help Your Business

Neil Patel — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:53:19 +0000

Are you a Netflix subscriber?

Well if you are, I bet I can guess how long you’ve been a customer…

…alright, I know there is no way I can guess how long you’ve been a subscriber, but the odds are you’ll only stay on for 25 months. How do I know that? Based on their lifetime value metric, an average Netflix subscriber stays on board for 25 months. And according to them, the lifetime value of a Netflix customer is $291…

A new initiative connects analysts with non-profits

Google Analytics team — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:17:00 +0000

The Google Analytics Team has always supported the promotion of analytics education and professional development. We’d like to share this guest post by Wendy Greco & Eric Peterson from Analysis Exchange – an initiative designed to provide hands-on training opportunities for aspiring web analytics professionals while providing free web data analysis to the entire nonprofit community.

In the right hands, technologies like Google Analytics can do great things, but unfortunately not every organization is able to hire resources to dedicate to web analytics…

Google’s updated privacy policy – what it means for Google Analytics users

Google Analytics team — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 21:46:00 +0000

You may have already heard that Google is rolling out a new main privacy policy on March 1. With these changes, the privacy policy will be easier to read, and will help us create one beautifully simple, intuitive user experience across Google products and services. The new privacy policy makes it clear that if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services – helping us treat you as a single user across all our products…